This post is the 2nd installment of my special reportage on NYC HIP HOP outfit, The Dugout.
As you'll recall last week's episode focused on Dugout member Cavalier (Here)
Today we're getting post-game, post hip-hop-being-dead analysis from Dugout Power Hitter StarPower
When contacting StarPower for this post he included in his response, this explanation of the reason why he makes songs like "ClockWork.":
"I purposely sample white artists who I feel have gained great privilege on the backs of minority artists. I'll jack white artists of any era - I've jacked Bob Dylan, Coldplay, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Elton John, The Raconteurs, The Beatles, etc. Mad legends. I'll jack 'em for a freestyle or a whole song. For me, it's a new way of making conscious music. Instead of the consciousness being in the words, I'm always making a statement with the tracks I choose to sample, and usually they're very noticeable samples. So the consciousness is in the method of making the songs. It's my own little movement called "Taking It Back." Meaning taking it back to the past, and taking back what's ours. It's why I rarely sample soul records. I'm feelin' your posts b/c it's a way of just tellin' muthafuckas that you're someone who feels a certain way about hip-hop, and they can like it or not. I fux with that.
Excuse the length of this,
I just wanted to let you know that. Peace.
btw, I know the sample for Bachelor's Party is by a black act, but I did it for the sheer spectacle of it, lol."
Back when Hip Hop was first diagnosed with the disease that would eventually take her life, it was easy, if you listened to the right records, went to the right shows, ran in the right circles, avoided the television, to forget she was sick at all.
If I wanted to forget about her ailments I could escape with my discman and ride the subways dreaming of undiscovered drum breaks and poetry.
I'd wake up, having missed my stop, with my face pressed up against the hard plastic window and that little spot of cold drool on the side of my mouth.
The first time I heard the song "Ink" it instantly brought me back to those groggy, late-night, blunted, train rides of my youth. I woke up three days later in my arm chair in my small ass apartment with the TV on static and that familiar drool on my collar.
This kid Cavalier spits a torrent stream of the illest poem-speak I've heard in a long time. I've seen him perform a couple of times with his crew The Dugout and they smash.
It's beautiful poetry. And it's not the type of poetry that makes you "hush, hush", sit up straight, and not cough. It's the type of poetry that makes you wanna punch a cop in the face or travel to a foreign country and fall in love without the use of the English language.
I also included this Freestyle cause I think it's ill and it sounds like if his boys wouldn't have stopped him he could of kept rhyming all night.
Cavalier: Ink Cavalier: Cavalier Freestyle both selections from "The Death-Circus EP"
